A poem by Rob Schackne

Locked inside the iron house

Seventeen others are snoring

There are no windows anywhere

No ventilation means we’re dying

Explorer Jeff Fuchs interviews a mountain trader and guide at 4800 metres

Cancer is no joke, but don't tell that to my friend Bai Heng. We were walking together on Friday night when he dropped a bombshell on me.

"Actually, my friend just found out he has cancer."

"OK, wow. How old is he?"

"He's thirty. It's 睾丸癌症." (gāowánáizhèng – testicular cancer)

"Damn, that's terrible!" I said.

"It's not so bad." A smile crept across his lips. "They had to remove one testicle. But hey, he's still got one left."

I nodded and Bai Heng paused for comedic effect.

"Now we all just call him 剩蛋老人." (shèngdànlǎorén – literally, "leftover ball old man", and an exact homophone for Santa Claus, 圣诞老人)

The colonialists endure – by Alec Ash

Four years ago, Alec, a 23 year old student of Chinese at IUP in Tsinghua University, put his feet up on the train seat in front of him. The carriage was pretty empty, and he was dead beat. So he peeled back a corner of the smelly blue seat covering across from him, and plopped a worn pair of Merrells on the wood underneath. This redistributed the weight from his bony arse across his legs and back. It felt great.

Talking garbage – by Sam Duncan

Yesterday I was walking home when the old lady who collects garbage in my apartment complex in Daqing spotted me from afar – she has eerily good eyesight – and yelled something at me. Usually she calls out one of two things: “Have you finished work?” or “Do you understand me?” But this time she said something different. I thought maybe she was talking about a butterfly. As I got closer she repeated herself, and I thought she was asking me something about my father. One of her favourite topics of interrogation was my family and why I don’t live with them.